


For Eternity

by Caitlyn_Collins



Category: Dark Shadows (1966), Night of Dark Shadows
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Hanging, Mobs with torches, One sentence mention of threatened child abuse, Revenge, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12541704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caitlyn_Collins/pseuds/Caitlyn_Collins
Summary: Hard times have come to the coast of Maine, and there are those all too willing to believe tales of witchcraft.  Based on “Night of Dark Shadows,” this tells the stories of three people touched forever by Angelique’s power.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in the August/September 1989 issue of the print fanzine “Inside the Old House” #34, edited by Dale C.

**John Morton's narrative: Sometime in the late 1850s.**

It was years ago that this happened, but I haven't forgotten. I can hear them say what an old man's memory is worth. I know they've told you that old John is dying and maybe it's true—and not to pay attention to what he says, but I know the truth. And the proof of it is here, marked on my own skin.

No, I don't talk about it much, never mentioned it at all for years. Not while the dreams still come most every night, when I could still hear that voice of hers hissing out threats, or see the bare arms of that tree, and the thing twisting in it.

I was 19 at the time and working for my father on his tenant farm. They needed men up at the great house—lots of work to be done, clearing the land. Hard, back-breaking work so the Master could have a good view of the ocean. There was maybe 10 of us at that time—sometimes more, sometimes less. I didn't work more than that summer and fall before I went back to the farm. Master Gabriel didn't want any of us around after that.

It had been a bad year. Insects hurt the crops badly, then an early frost. We were all scared about the coming winter. Too little food for everyone, and bitter cold kills the starving people easy. But none of us were really helping with the harvest. No, we worked sunup to sundown, on all the things the Master wanted done on his property.

Lots of us thought we should be doing other things instead. Come winter, the Master and his family would be living in warmth and comfort in their fine halls, with plenty to eat, but what could we count on? Nothing but our earth-floored cottages and whatever we'd managed to fill up the cellar with, if it was even full at all. That, and prayers that we wouldn't be sealed in by the snows and die of the cold or the hunger before spring came.

Yes, things were bad that year, which is why many of us took to listening to the words of Rev. Strack. A man gets churching with his mother's milk, but sometimes you pay more attention to it than others. And in that year, with the crops failing and the cows and pigs dying off from some mysterious ailment, people listened a lot more closely.

He talked a lot about sin and God's wrath on all who blaspheme and fornicate. That's what he was saying when the summer began, and people were not listening too much. Toward the harvest, with the bad crops in and Crogan's herd dead, more babies dying than should, and Matthew Ogden as well, a fine stout man in middle years, for no apparent reason at all—began talking of witchery.

By the time the first cold came and the leaves lay scattered across the ground, others were talking, too. There'd been fever that fall, before the cold ever came, and people were more scared than ever. So when Rev. Herrick named Angelique Collins, already known for her wicked ways, as the one responsible, then died himself just after, we all knew what had to be done.

We were really fearful, but excited, too; the witch would try to strike us down. Rev. Strack cautioned us to be strong in our faith. We caught her in the arms of her husband's brother, parading her shame for all to see. There was fire in those eyes of hers, blue hellfire that threatened to leap out and destroy us all. But we all held firm, and took her to the tree outside.

I've told you before what happened then: Of how she stood there on the platform, staring toward the house, haughty and proud to the last, of the snap of her neck when we dropped her down. How Strack instructed us to leave the body as it was until nature plucked it clean. Of how we found Strack himself, body torn by horses' hooves, near the graveyard. How her lover's wife, Laura, was found drowned in their huge stone pond. How Charles himself later vanished.

What I never told you of is this: Days later—I don't know how many—Master Gabriel called some of us in again. It had grown colder, and the wind got bad at times. When it blew, the great tree shook, and you could hear its scream through the branches. At times it seemed like it was a voice calling. We couldn't tell whose; we didn't want to know. The body was still up there; white bone showing through the tattered black rags.

Master Collins wanted it down. Swinging as it was, right in front of his big fancy window, we didn't wonder why. So we climbed back up into that great tree, two others and me. It was a fearful sight, the skull grinning and the black rags flapping in the wind; the cold itself biting at our bones. But the Master wanted it down, and his temper was fearful too. So we did it, Jonas and Tom and me; we cut the body loose and lowered it down to the ground. The Master had a box for it, and chains made up, and a place for it to go. No, I don't know where. He was going to show us that, but I never found it.

It befell that I was the one who lifted the upper part of the body into the box. I reached under, getting the back of the skull with one hand. The eye sockets were bare, the teeth grinning. I thought of how strange it was for all the flesh to go so fast; there weren't that many birds out at that time of year, all gone because of the cold. Then I think I slipped on the muddy ground, or maybe something else moved to trip me. I don't know, but I found myself on the ground, the bones laying right atop me.

My heart gave a mighty lurch as I looked up into those empty sockets. Then something hard and tight circled my right wrist and squeezed like the crush of a vice. I think I yelled—I don't remember rightly—and tried to scramble out. It was like those bony arms were aholding onto me, like the weight of those bones was keeping me pinned to the earth. I was struggling, and Tom and Jonas were helping; they got the body pulled to the side, but something was still holding my arm fast. The last thing I saw was the witch's bony fingers, clamped tight around my wrist.

Well, they told me I fainted dead away, and it was Jonas and Tom who did as Master Collins told them. What they did with the body I have no wish to know. My arm was never right since then, and I keep it covered up, so I don't have to see the marks those fingers left, deep as a brand in my flesh. I went back to the farm, and now can do near as much with one arm as others with two. I don't bemoan my fate. I count myself the lucky one. It was only my arm she got. Both Jonas and Tom were found dead later, those same finger marks dug deep in the flesh of their necks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Charles Collins, 1810**

The feel of their hands was still with him, bruised deep on arms and shoulders, and his ribs sent stabs of pain from where he had been kicked when he had fallen. Gabriel had laughed then; his memory of the nervous titter overlain with the sound of the last words he had heard spoken.

“For eternity, brother.”

The words had reverberated and echoed off the dank walls of this underground chamber, Gabriel's mad laughter following as the doors clanged shut. The place was pitch dark and stank of mildew and decay. Panic had seized him—mindless, he'd thrown himself again and again against the solid oak-and-iron door, bloodying hands and bruising shoulders until at last he'd collapsed in a panting, exhausted heap upon the floor.

He didn't know how long he had lain there in a nightmarish stupor of drained rage, grief and terror. In the blackness, with no sound, time vanished and the only images in his mind were half-formed phantoms: Laura's contorted face as his hands forced her under the icy water again; the bloody flecks on Strack's lips as his horse pounded the minister's flesh into the ground. And sometimes, dimly, the faces of his parents, two cold effigies floating, a spectral haze at the edges of his vision.

Faces of the dead. Ready to welcome him.

He shifted painfully, injured ribs making him cough. Pain stabbed, clutching him greedily. Then, at last, the nausea passed a little and other things intruded: the sound of his breath, rasping in his lungs; his heartbeat, pounding in his ears; the dry crunch of the ground beneath as he changed position. The blackness was so intense his eyes ached with the strain of attempting to see something—anything. Closing them did no good; the impenetrable dark still pressed painfully inward. Neither diminished the fear, the knife edge of panic sawing at his guts.

Buried alive. His mind admitted the words and veered away. He could feel his own laughter welling up and fought it, slamming his fists against the doorway again and again until the skin had split and sticky blood stuck his fingers together.

He quieted again, nursing his pain as a bane to the insanity that threatened since watching her death. That image returned, vividly etched in his mind: the skeletal branches of the tree; the long black cloak they had dressed her in; the wild gold of her hair against the tinny autumn sky. The rope around her neck; the blue fire of her eyes, possessing his for a moment, then roving upward to one of the house windows; the angle of her head, after she fell.

 ...Charles...

He started at the sound of the voice and twisted his head in a vain attempt to see. No further sound came, but with a shock, his mind finally focused again, snapped out of the delirious haze his panic had thrown him into.

This was the deepest chamber beneath the house, he remembered, meant for a root cellar, but never used. He'd explored it all when he was much younger. The cold was seeping into his bones; quite likely he'd die of it before the thirst claimed him. A scant comfort, that.

Rage again filled him at the thought of his brother triumphing—weak-willed, petty Gabriel. That excuse for a man had never deserved the wife he had had—not a woman that vibrant, that beautiful, that compelling. Not Angelique, that child of the demons or the angels, not one who knew so much about heaven and hell combined.

With a start, he remembered the last light he had seen. The drunken guttering of the torches as they swayed and dipped, held by some farmhand toward the back of the struggling group as they forced him down the endless stairs. Insane shadows twisting upon the walls. Harsh, geometric lines scantily revealed by the thrashing light. A wooden box in the center of the room, and Gabriel's words again: "You shall have her...for eternity, brother."

He scrambled toward the center of the room, heedless of the stabbing pain that flared in his ribs and the pounding in his head. It was there in the center; his hands grabbed against rough wood. He dragged himself along until he had measured its length, then set his hands to pry at the lid.

The cover was wooden as well, and not nailed down. Wood scraped against wood as he shoved it fiercely aside. It thumped upon the dirt floor beyond, the sound loud in his ears; all sound magnified by the total darkness. Breath coming in excited gasps, he reached inside without hesitation. His hands, though, were gentle as they explored what lay within.

By chance, he encountered the skull first, the bone as smooth and clean as if the woman it had housed had been dead many years. His hands held the memory of her soft golden hair, of her flesh like satin, of the soft fine line of her brows and the flutter of her lashes. He caressed the bone, not really feeling it at all, his memories more alive than this reality.

It was several seconds before he noticed the oddity. The bone underneath his hands was rounded and smooth. No obstruction, no gaping holes. It was the back of the skull, not the face.

He explored further, hand tracing down the rag-covered backbone, feeling the hard joints of the ribs at either side. Down further, he encountered something even more startling—the hands, bones still joined together, were chained at the wrists. And even lower, he found that iron spikes and rings had been set in the wood, and the ankles chained down as well.

His mind, numbed, finally formed the picture: the body, with its wrists and ankles chained, had been placed in the coffin face down. A peculiar horror filled him. He had never been much for society's conventions, but this violation of the treatment of the dead cut somewhere deep inside.

He wanted to laugh again, let in the madness. Memories of old superstitions danced in like ghosts: Uneducated villagers with old wives’ tales and fanatics, afraid of their own shadows when the sun set. Chain the dead down; keep them from walking. Turn the face of the witch toward hell.

Let not the dead rise up and walk to haunt the dreams of the living. There was a dizzying roar in his head which peaked and passed. Somewhere, pain lived as well, but it was somewhere far away.

_...Charles..._

The voice again, drifting in the stillness, very real.

"Angelique," he whispered.

There was warmth beneath his hands. Softness. His fingers now pressed against warm flesh. Slowly, following her form, he moved forward until his fingers tangled in silky hair.

"You love me, Charles. Say that you love me..."

"I do," he whispered. "I do love you." Awe, ecstasy, shaken through to his soul. The echo of his words died in his ears.

"Take my hands, Charles."

He moved back, searching in the darkness to where cold metal bound two slender wrists together as strong fingers found and grasped his hands.

"You want me, Charles."

"Oh, yes." It was a groan torn from him, the soft voice from the unseen form banishing all thought of place and circumstance. There was a stirring beneath him as slowly the woman rose to her knees.

He could not say how it happened then. One hand was still in the coffin, and his mind clearly registered that it was bone he caressed. But the other hand was grasped by the warm small hand of someone standing right beside him.

"Charles," came the whisper out of the darkness.

And then her mouth found his, devouring. He abandoned himself to her, allowed himself to be lain back down upon the cold earth floor, not feeling it at all, feeling instead molten tongues of fire as her hands and her mouth searched out all the familiar ways of his body.

His caresses, too, were taken by her, and his nerves and flesh, which bore the memories of all the times he had possessed her, were possessed as well, as she caught up inside her the essence of his life and soul. Drained, he lay there in the earth, and the cold came in, seeping into his limbs, settling inside his body. In languorous grace, his mind floated somewhere toward the edges of awareness. The darkness around him was no longer complete. Above him, pale face surrounded by a wild golden halo, Angelique smiled down. Her hand was a tender caress as she rested it by the side of his head.

"I shall always love you, Charles. I promise you that. And we shall be together again. I promise that, as well."

Now, he tried to say, but the words remained unspoken. Another knowledge was arriving—the heaviness inside his lungs, the awareness that he was barely breathing.

"I cannot give you any gift at all, except you shall not die in pain," her voice whispered again, though her face was fading, receding away. Her hands, though, were still warm, and pressed to his side, where the knife-edge of his broken ribs had cut into his lungs and let the blood inside. _Drowning,_ he thought, but that too was something distant.

"Together..." he managed to say.

Her voice was a quiet sob. "Not yet," she sighed. "Not yet, but I will be here for you. As long as you love me. As long as you remember me, I will be here for you..."

Her voice faded, finally, into the darkness, but her word was true. There was no pain. He felt himself floating, on the tide of his own blood, out to some limitless sea…


	3. Chapter 3

**Sarah Castle, 1812**

Master Gabriel's son went away again yesterday, back to that school where he keeps him all the time now. Never wanted to have him here. When we were littler, he'd pull my hair and put frogs and nasty things in my bed. This time, it was his hand he was putting in my dress, and his voice promising to do a lot more.

Yes, Master Gabriel, send Tad back to that school. You'd be just as bad, but you never look at anyone anymore. They've all gone now. You've got cousins, but they won't come here. No friends to visit, no man of God, not since Rev. Strack. No one to ask the advice of the respected Master of Collinwood. Not since you went all crazy and began to see things in the night. I see them too, but they won't hurt me. And I don't tell anyone about them, either.

No, I don’t say a word; she told me not to. And I listen to everything she says, because she's so much wiser than all of us. Even when you had her put in that tree, she knew she would be back, and I'm helping her. You didn't think anyone would ever find her, down where you had those men put her. They all paid for helping you do what you did.

She's just waiting a bit longer for you, because, you see, she knows that you know she's here. That you feel her presence. I've seen her in the hallways at night, following you with a hungry, haunted look on her face. I've seen her white hands as she touches you, lacing her fingers ever so lightly around your neck. And the way you put your hand up to loosen your collar, your fingers going through hers, almost as if she wasn't there, but you know that she is. You do.

No, I never went into the cellar room. She told me not to, that it wasn't important, that whatever is in there doesn't matter. She's right, too. She visits me as well and tells me that I'm loved, that she'll watch over me always. I couldn't see her at first.  Somehow, though, I knew she was there.  I'd start thinking of a tune for no reason, one of her favorites, or the scent of her perfume would linger on the air.  My fingers would find the locket she gave me, and I would feel the warmth of her smile, bask in the approval in her unseen eyes.  Sometimes she'd leave things for me: a trinket, a sachet, a handkerchief—things I knew Master Gabriel had burned. But she saved them, somehow, as special gifts for me.

I spent a lot of time looking at Charles' paintings of her. So grand. Whenever I look at them I almost think the people there are alive. My favorite is the one where she's lying back, hand outstretched, waiting with that smile of hers—the one she always had whenever she knew things were going just right. She wears that smile a lot now.

And I can see her so much more clearly. In the first days, all I'd see was a kind of whiteness in the shadows, 1ike some mist had crept inside and was exploring the house, like a little corner of a cloud, or a shadow, where there shouldn't be any. Then she started talking to me in the night. Telling me how important I was to her; telling me how strong my memories of her were, and for me to think of her often. I did, too, and each night she'd come back, a little more clearly, and her voice changed from coming from a distance to where it was like any other person in the same room.

It's taken years, but she says time doesn't matter now. She tells me of things she wants to happen, but I don't understand them all. She wants Charles back, that is the most important thing. He's gone beyond her now to some other place, and she says she must be very patient because, in the end, he will return to her. It will take many years—more time than I can even imagine.

I'm important to her, too. She says I carry her existence with me, that I make her strong. I'm so proud to be able to help her this way. So happy, because she loves me. My mother never did, but she's gone now anyway. They're all gone, except Master Gabriel...

All gone.

I was at the foot of the stairs this morning when Master Gabriel came out onto the landing. He was dressed for outside with a greatcoat and scarf. When he saw me, he frowned and began yelling. He doesn't like seeing me at all; he wants to send me away. I don't know why he never did. Too much else on his thoughts, I suppose.

She was standing in front of him, clearer than I'd ever seen her, and in daylight, too. I could barely see the outline of the window behind her. He didn't see her at all. He walked right through and came over to the railing, shouting at me to get back to the kitchen. I didn't answer him; I was too busy watching her. She came up behind him, her arms around his, at first like they were lovers. Her hair was undone, and she took golden ropes of it and wound them around his throat. He pushed at his collar a bit, his face getting red. He was still yelling at me, and I was staring back.

Then he stopped. He just froze, and I could see he was scared, by the look in his eyes. One of her hands had come up to caress his face, and she was whispering something in his ear. Then he was moving away from her, pushing against the railing in his terror. It cracked, like thunder, giving way before him, and that's when he screamed.

It is so clear how it all happened. I can see it now, without even closing my eyes. He started to fall as his scarf whipped back. I saw her take hold of it; I saw it wind around a broken piece of railing. His body snapped abruptly to a halt; the crack of his neck as it broke sounding loudly.

Then he was just swinging there, but I wasn't seeing him at all. It was as if I was looking out that upstairs window two years ago, and it was her I was seeing instead, her black-clad figure twisting slowly in the branches.

Then I was looking at the landing again, not at him at all. She was there, just like a real person, looking right at me. Then she began to laugh. And so did I.

 


End file.
